Thursday, January 30, 2014

Announcing the 2014 Campbellian Anthology

First, a few words from the publisher:
M. David Blake’s magnum opus, the 2014 Campbellian Anthology, is now available for download! This book attempts to collect in one volume representative works by most of the writers eligible for this year’s John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. We don’t have them all—there were a few we couldn’t get—but all the same, this book contains more than 860,000 words of fiction by 111 authors, and best of all, it’s not merely free, it's DRM-FREE.

But it’s only available for a limited time, so download your copy soon, by clicking on one of these links and selecting “Save file.”

UPDATE 02/02/14 7:30PM CST: Due to the staggering amount of web traffic this book is generating--more than 3,500 hits in just the past 90 minutes--we are adding more download sites. The kind folks at Writertopia.com, StarShipSofa.com, and Tor.com are now hosting mirror sites, and we will be announcing more mirror sites as they come online. Thank you for your interest and your patience.

StarShipSofa mirror site: (the .mobi and .epub files are zipped and must be unzipped before use)
Mobi | Epub | Cover

Tor.com mirror site:
Mobi | Epub

Don't have a Kindle or other e-reader? Then use the free Kindle Reading App, available for most computers, tablets, or smart phones, the Kindle Cloud Reader, that lets you read .mobi files in your web browser, the Nook Reading Apps, which are comparable but for .epub files, or any one of about a gazillion other epub reading apps that are available for download, and mostly for free. Let us know if you find one you really like and would recommend!

UPDATE: We've learned that some web browsers attempt to open the .mobi or .epub files directly, most often producing a window full of gibberish. If you click on one of the download links and it does not offer you the option to save the file, try right-clicking on the link and selecting the "Save Link As" option. (Wording may vary, depending on your choice of browser.)

ANOTHER UPDATE: We've discovered that while our web hosting service provides us with unlimited bandwidth, there's a hard limit on the number of download connections that can be open simultaneously. We've since upgraded our service and quadrupled the number of simultaneous connections permitted. If you tried to download this book earlier and got HTTP Error 503 - Service unavailable, try again now.

And now, a few words from the curator:

Here We Go Again(or: wait, are we still
here?)

A little over a year ago, a small
group of us had a crazy idea. “What
if,” we said, “there was a way
everyone eligible for the Campbell
could publicize their work at the
same time, so that readers might
have some idea of who we are?”

Now, I don’t recall every name who
was part of the original discussion
(I could check, but that would be
work, and I’m plumb tuckered out
after assembling this tome),
although at some point I volunteered
to oversee an anthology if the
others would all agree to
participate. That first volume had a
very respectable showing, with 43
writers represented by a combined
total of roughly 350,000 words.

What a difference a year makes! The
volume you now hold in your hands is
considerably larger, and includes a
multitude of works from 111
contributors, spanning more than
860,000 words. (Should anyone be
curious, that exceeds the combined
total in George R. R. Martin’s A
Storm of Swords and A
Dance with Dragons, which
are—so far, at least!—the two
longest volumes from A Song of
Ice and Fire.)

It is big. It is very big. And
judging from this year’s response,
next year’s volume will likely be
larger.

Now, any standard anthology
introduction might interrupt itself
at this point with some self-assured
bluster about how much you, the
reader, will enjoy every smidgen of
the contents.

You won’t. There will be some
stories in this volume that you
dislike, perhaps even strongly, and
that’s okay. Every writer whose work
is represented herein still
accomplished something remarkable in
attaining a specific level of
publication, and by doing so earned
a place within these pages. I
encourage you to investigate each
and every one, but I make no promise
about how you’ll feel about the
stories that landed them here, or
the works they elected to share.

Here’s a secret: You don’t have to
read this entire anthology for it to
serve a purpose and be valuable to
you. You’re allowed to skip around.

So you’ve already spotted the next
Adams, Butler, or Cherryh? Try the
next Xue, Yolen, or Zelazny… or
anything in between.

A story lost you along the way, or
did something you’ve already seen
too many times? Try a different
story, or a different excerpt, or
even a different writer.

There are a lot of words in this
volume. I can’t tell you where to
focus your attention; by agreeing to
play host, I also agreed to remain
impartial. That doesn’t mean I don’t
have favorites (I do), but it means
I ask you to decide upon your own.

Here’s another secret: If you do
read every word in this anthology,
and investigate all the links for
those currently known to be
eligible, you’ll probably discover a
new favorite. At least one. And if
you do—if you, as a reader, connect
with even a single new writer—then I
will feel very, very good about this
year’s installment of the Annual
Campbellian Anthology.

Now, go make a friend. Your writers
are waiting.

— M. David
Blake

What You Should Do Now: If
you plan to nominate
anyone—regardless of whether or not
that individual chose to participate
in the 2014 Campbellian
Anthology—as a recipient of
the John W. Campbell Award for Best
New Writer, please visit www.loncon3.org/memberships
and purchase at least a
“Supporting” membership. Doing so will allow you to nominate
for both the Campbell and Hugo
Awards (if you register before 31
January 2014), receive the 2014 Hugo
Voter Packet, and vote on the final
ballot.

Please Note (from the website):
“Members of Loncon 3 who have an
Attending, Young Adult Attending or
Supporting membership by 31 January
2014 are eligible to nominate for
the Hugo Awards and the Retro-Hugos.
Equivalent members of LoneStarCon 3
(the 2013 Worldcon) and Sasquan (the
2015 Worldcon) at that date are also
eligible to nominate.”

Unless you are a member of one of
those conventions by 31 January
2014, you will not be
allowed to nominate… but you will
still be allowed to enjoy the 2014
Campbellian Anthology.

Sally, there is not a PDF, but may I suggest an alternative? You can read the ePub version on a computer using the free Adobe Digital Editions software, or the Mobi version on a variety of devices using the Kindle Reading Apps (links below).

(I'm not the publisher, just one of the contributors.) It can be converted to PDF with Calibre, I just tried and it took a while for me because of the large filesize, but it worked just fine. Calibre is free, multiplatform and relatively easy to use, but if you have any difficulties with it, you can ask me on Twitter (@tzniuswarrior) or on my website.

Calibre can also just display ebook files on your desktop computer, without the need for conversion. It is my personal choice for reading on my tablet that runs a desktop OS, but tastes may vary!

Peter, the contract we issued allows us to make this content available "in appropriate ebook variants." By itself, "an ordinary HTML file" does not fit that definition.

However, the files are DRM-FREE (meaning there is no encryption that might prevent your viewing the content on whatever device you choose), and ePub is essentially XHTML within a renamed ZIP archive. Should you wish to un-ZIP the contents and view them in your browser, rather than installing a browser plugin that would enable you to view the file as a native format, you are certainly welcome to do so.

I apologize for the noobieness of this question. I just installed the Kindle reader program onto my Mac laptop so I could read this anthology. However, when I click on this link (http://rampantloonmedia.com/downloads/2014CampbellianAnthology_Kindle.mobi) all I get is a gobbledegook page in my Safari browser window. What part of this process am I doing wrong? Thanks.

Nathan, try to right-click (or Control+Click, on a Mac) and choose "Save As." Some browsers aren't quite sure what to do with Mobi files, but telling the browser to save the file in this manner should bypass the issue, and then you'll be able to add it to your Kindle Reader app.

Ah. The bottleneck wasn't a limit on our bandwidth, but on the number of _simultaneous_ connections our hosting plan permitted. I've just upgraded the rampantloonmedia.com site to quadruple the number of simultaneous connections supported. If we exceed that...

Correction: Robin Wyatt Dunn's qualifying sale was not published in Arc 1.4, but by The Tomorrow Project, as part of a competition ("Is the Future Friendly?") hosted by Arc. The purpose of the competition was to select a story for publication in Arc 1.5.

Although Dunn's story was not the overall winner, and has never appeared in Arc, it was still selected as one of five runners up and accordingly received prize money for web publication.

My apologies for the error. It does not affect his eligibility, or the dates of his eligibility, since the prize money was tied to publication and was sufficient to cross the necessary threshold.

Awesome! Make sure anyone who reads this checks out Stant Litore's No Lasting Burial and the rest of his books! Awesome writer!!

.mobi and .epub actually are pdf files, there are many different programs that can be downloaded to read those files computer or mobile, if they do not work for you, there are also plenty of sites where you can convert the files to a format that will work for your device if you have any issues.

I use both pdflite and freepdftablet to open my files on my computer. Adobe works just as well but is too large an application for my liking!